Your occupation?

[STL]

Again, it's just what I've been told - I cannot speak from personal experience as I have never studied nor taught the IB curriculum.

I don't really think it matters what you or I have experienced. It's the simple fact that universities across the globe themselves regard it highly that says enough. You also need to look no further than the conversion rates between VCE/HSC and IB to get an idea of the comparative difficulty. I mean a bare pass in IB is the equivalent of an ENTER of 75 odd in VCE. Facts speak for themselves.

And as I've alluded to, you need to look beyond just what the education fraternity thinks and look at employers too.

So they told you that the fact that you had enrolled for IB placed you at a greater advantage over those studying the VCE?

They didn't even register what VCE was to be honest. IB they understood straight away and appreciated the standard that I would be achieving. This and the SAT tests would be what was relevant to my success.

While it's true that the IB has an entirely different form of assessment and curriculum I don't think it's accurate to say that HSC is centred around "memorisation" if by that you mean rote-learning. Rote-learning is something that is largely frowned upon by most educators and is only used in areas where nobody has devised a better method of teaching something, e.g.: multiplication table. There are still some things that still need to be taught and learnt by rote - but it is avoided as much as possible. The current HSC is outcomes based. Syllabuses vary between different subjects of course so some subjects (possibly mathematics) may lend itself more to memorisation than others.

Well the VCE says that as well. Unfortunately, what you say you do is very different from what you actually do. I tutor kids from all sorts of backgrounds, both as part of volunteering and private work b/c I enjoy teaching. I can tell you now, that students will tell you that a large part of learning is memorisation. Teachers tell the students otherwise but that's not what happens on the ground. Most uni students who have just left high school will tell you that too.

At the end of the day, I think that the modern school environment makes it very hard for a teacher to open the minds of kids up. There are just too many distractions. Yes there are the studious type but they are in the minority. The vast majority of students though have a myraid of social concerns and learning is on the lower end of their spectrum.

The main thing it comes down to though is a school by school basis. We've got to remember that each school approaches things differently. I'm not one to say which school is better but unfortunately that the future seems to dictate that wealth will be a prime indicator of academic success.